


Violet

by orphan_account



Series: Flip It Four Ways [4]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-12
Updated: 2011-01-12
Packaged: 2017-10-14 16:57:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,982
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/151464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave Strider figures that if he's ever going to surpass John, he needs to find out more about himself. Thus begins a cross-dimensional adventure of discovery.</p><p>In this episode, Dave Strider meets David Lalonde, a bit of a creeper.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Violet

He felt blind.

Even behind his glasses the light was such that his eyes stung and watered. He raised a hand to shade his eyes and searched, desperately, for some sort of shade. There was none to be found – it was so bright that he didn't even cast a shadow.

The heat, too, was intense; a desert's glare. High above Skaia was less a symbol of their goal than a baleful eye, searing all it touched.

The ground was sandy, some sort of pale crystal that shifted underneath his feet. The crystals, too, shone with a searing light – light above, light below.

Above all, it was silent. Eerily silent. He was so used to the constant ticking of LOHAC that the idea of _silence_ was almost terrifying. Dave Egbert's LOHAW had been filled with constant whistling; Hellmurder Island had teemed with birds with the sound of the sea all around. Here?

Nothing. Even the shifting of the sand made no sound at all. There was only the heat, and the light.

Time had been recently an almost tangible thing to Dave, something he could sense and pull at, a rhythm. This had overridden his once utter lack of patience. Before, he'd fidgeted, he'd tapped his feet while sitting, he'd taken on more projects and hobbies than it was actually possible to keep up with in an effort to fill the passing of the hours. He'd since learned a little patience, subjecting himself to the flow and having a little patience.

But again, the lack of sound here meant that the hours seemed to pass with uncharacteristic slowness. No amount of fiddling with the timetables shook the feeling, and so it seemed like an eternity had passed when he stumbled upon the palace.

Literally. He was so glad that Terezi couldn't see him like this, she'd be laughing her ass off. He slowly felt around the base of the thing. Why couldn't he see it? Damn thing was right there, even if it was made of glowy shit it shouldn't be _invisible_.

His blind flailing found him a step, which he felt along, whacking it with his hands until he was sure it was there. The ascent was a shuddering, halting affair, each step an attempt to make certain it was really there.

 _This is stupid. What am I even looking for anyway?_

After all, the last two Daves hadn't been very helpful. The first it turned out hadn't been able to use the Quest Bed either; the second had been out of his mind. And this one? Who even knew.

 

 _I should turn back._

He kept climbing. As he ascended, it actually grew darker, and he could see faint outlines of the building he stood on. He caught reflections of himself occasionally in its surface, until finally he could see himself beneath his feet.

 _There's one way to find the path._

This took him inside, where he was suddenly faced with a thousand reflections of himself – not time duplicates, but mirrors. Red and black Daves looked at him from every angle (and he was very glad, suddenly, that he hadn't changed into his Felt suit).

It was still bright inside – the glass was luminescent, like everything else on this planet – but it was at least a little darker than it was outside. He stepped forward through a patch of brighter light.

And immediately jumped back. He was lucky that his hand had hit it first – he sported a bright red sunburn across the back of his hand.

 _Heat and light. Gog damn Strider, you're an idiot._

He looked around the temple now with new eyes. There were numerous patches of white hot light, focused through lenses and reflected by the mirrors.

 _Jegus fuck, why are these places always crazy videogame deathtraps?_

 _Maybe because this is a crazy videogame._

 _Stop talking to yourself._

He came to a hall of mirrors.

Here, the light had dimmed to something that seemed almost cool and dark, save for the few lances of white-hot light that pierced the darkness. Otherwise, everything was a pale violet. Strangely, the heat was more intense here.

 _Ultraviolet light,_ he mused. _Darker it goes the hotter it gets. Just 'cause you can't see it doesn't mean it can't kill you._

Still, despite the dimness, the figure in the center of the hall stood out like a tarantula on a wedding cake. It was dressed all in black, its face obscured by a dark hood.

The figure stood slowly, drawing its sword - a piece that had even more of the tarantula-on-wedding-cake look than the figure itself. The blade didn't seem to be _there_ : it was composed of a series of squares that seemed to shift along its length when it moved, but more than that it was black to the point that it looked like a scar on the world, a series of dead pixels on a screen.

“Stay where you are.

Dave stopped in mid step.

“What? Why?”

“I merely ask that you hold still.”

It was so fast Dave couldn't even see it. He could _feel_ it though, a tug on Time's fabric, a skip in the beat – Lalonde was moving at the speed of light.

Quicker than thought he whipped out his timetables – no scratching back, that'd create a splinter timeline. He had just enough time to try something completely different.

The left disk, red, he spun back and forth, mentally making adjustments before spinning it as fast as he could. The right, violet, he slowed to almost stopping. He could feel the time-tables rattle with the effort of him bending them to a purpose they weren't quite ready to take on, feel them resisting his sudden improvisation. Gears ground and shuddered, and as he he turned to face the other boy he could see Lalonde flicker and turn nearly transparent as he slowed down, the actual light radiating from him slowing as it met Strider's eyes.

Lalonde was reaching one hand for his shirt, the other white-knuckled around that black blade. He was not okay with this. What the hell was the other Dave _doing?_ He took a step backwards.

And into open air.

He couldn't even scream. He fell ten feet before hitting something hard and tumbling heels over head down a steep, curving incline. The timetables clattered the ground just after, one of them coming to rest far above and the other bouncing down behind him.

 _It wasn't there before it wasn't_ there _what the fuck what the fuck..._

He flailed out his arms and scrabbled, trying to stop himself, but all he did was push himself towards the edge... and fall off of it.

Open air.

Darkness.

He couldn't even scream. He couldn't scratch back to save himself; the timetables were lost somewhere in the abyss and it just

kept

 

getting

 

darker

 

time

s t r e t c h e d

 _D I A L A T E D_

s

l

 

o

 

w

 

e

 

 

d

.  
.  
.

 **stopped?**

ƃuıpuəun pəuƃıəɹ ssəuʞɹɐp əɥʇ llıʇs puɐ

someone wake me up

please god someone wake me up

bro  
bro

bro where the hell are you

davesprite

 

somebody for the love of god

 

terezi

 

 

 

 

jade

 

 

no no no stupidest way to go out ever fuck fuck let me out

 

please just

 

no i dont want to be the doomed one

 

 

 

please

 

 

 

And then a hand closed around his arm.

“Do you want to live?”

“What kind of completely fucking stupid question is that!? YES, damn you, yes!”

“Oh good.”

Something warm and faintly violet wrapped around him, and he could feel Time compressing, slipping towards a singularity as their motion through space as everything, everything turned that same violent violet.

It was over in an eternity and an instant. He lay perfectly still, something heavy sitting on top of him, and he took in the fact that everything was full of light. God. He'd never noticed how lovely light was before. Man, what was this heavy warm thing on top of him? That was nice too. Actually yeah let's just. Lay here. Like a coolkid. This is cool, and what just happened was totally fine.

Man what is that warm heavy thing.

“... get off.”

“My apologies.”

The warm weight lifted.

“It's simply that you seemed so comfortable like th-”

“Please shut up.”

He lay there for a few long moments, trying to put himself back together. He was fine, really. Just fine. Long descents into an unknowable abyss with the threat of imminent death were totally not a problem at all.

Totally.

He was just lying here because.

Yes.

“Where are my glasses.”

“I have them. But, really, what's a little knowledge of unusual eye colors between alternate universe selves? Mine are violet, if you were wondering.”

“I wasn't.”

Totally fine.

He pushed himself up to a sitting position and put his palms on the ground at last.

“And the timetables?”

His counterpart sat a few feet away, also cross-legged. His hood was finally down, and, Strider could see, his eyes were indeed lavender. He had a pair of glasses in one hand, but his main digital communication device seemed to be a pair of headphones with a green visor. Something like Rose's headband thing, but with a bit more of a Dave-ish flair.

 

“Caught those as well.”

Lalonde retrieved them from his fetch modus (Hashmap as well, Strider noted) and lay them on the ground in front of him, along with the iShades.

“Which leaves just one more question.”

“What's that?”

“What the fuck were you doing back there?”

Lalonde gave a thin smile. “David, you silly thing,” he said. “I was merely attempting to warn you about the stairs.”

Strider stared for a moment in blank disbelief, then started laughing. He rolled back over onto his back and laughed so hard he nearly convulsed.

“ _Warned_ me, oh kicking christ, warned me about the _stairs_ , you were trying to tell me dawg...”

He laughed until he couldn't any more. Lalonde simply tilted his head slightly, his gaze distant but calculating. After a while, silence descended on them and stretched into a middle distance. Lalonde shifted slightly. Strider rotated his shoulders.

“So - ”

“Well...”

Another long pause.

“I believe you have the right of way here, David.”

“Dude, the name's Dave. Not David. _Dave._ ”

Lalonde raised an eyebrow. “Merely 'Dave'? My goodness, Mr. Strider is even less creative than I thought. An expression of your flawed perception of irony, perhaps?”

“Je _gus_ , 'Mr. Strider?' Are you fucking kidding me? You make him sound like some dude in tweed and a bow tie, and lemmie tell ya, Bro would only ever wear that shit ironically.”

Again, that thin smile. “For some definitions of 'irony', of course.”

“Oh man, spare me the grammar lesson, okay? Okay.”

The silence fell again between them, and stretched on. Lalonde shifted in his black armor, pulling a little at his collar. Strider wondered how the guy wore that thing in this heat. It was bad enough in a tux; six pounds of chainmail must have been stifling.

“Nice duds.”

“Do you really think so, or is that yet more of your peculiar idea of irony?”

“Nah, that's honesty. Seriously. You look the part. Just like Rose's got the mumbo jumbo crazy girl thing down, you got the crazy Monty Python knight templar thing down.”

“Thank you, I suppose? I made it myself. Well, rather, there's alchemization involved, but it came from a bracelet I made. You can still see my handiwork in the weave.”

“Wait, so you make chainmail instead of knitting? Dang, and here I thought you really were gay. You got one shred of manliness left in you. Nice job.”

“My sexual proclivities are none of your concern. No, not even as an alternate of myself,” said Lalonde before Strider could protest. “Goodness, one would think you were a _shipper_. We're much too young to be certain of those sorts of things, and in far too dire straights for it to be a pressing concern. Leave the question of romancing until after the war is won. ”

Well, Strider didn't have much to say to that. There was that strangely uncomfortable silence again.

This time, it was Lalonde who broke it.

“Why are you here, David,” he said, softly, looking at his hands.

“Man, deep question. Why _are_ we here, man? What could possibly be the - ”

“Spare me your quaint sarcasm. Give me truth, Strider.”

Strider sat back up and considered. Why was he here, after all? It was a surprisingly good question. After the incident with Harley, he'd almost forgotten.

“Power,” he said at last. “I wanted to see what other me's were like, if any of you had hit the god tiers. Needed to know if I could get strong enough to...”

“To win.”

“Yeah.”

Lalonde closed his eyes, and sighed, just a little.

“But power always has a price. And I don't believe you'll find what you seek, though you may find what you need. It seems that even with the influence of environment, there are still certain things we fear.”

“Sorry, but I have a hard time believing that a Lalonde gives a damn about the price of things.”

Lalonde opened his eyes and gave Strider an icy glare. “I know not what deals with demons your Lalonde - is it Rose? Rose, then, oh, gods, I shudder to imagine what being raised by our mother has done to her - point being, I know not what demons she has dealt with. I will say this, though. There is a reason this palace is filled with searing light and hidden stairs, there is a _reason_ this house is a ~~labyrinth~~ ”

Strider nearly covered his ears at that last sentence. Something... _hollow_... echoed in it. He kept his expression neutral, of course. Stay cool.

“Fair 'nuff, he said. “New topic: how were you doing what you did back there? I thought only the Time player could pull those kinds of slick speed shenanigans.”

“Light is a tricky element,” said Lalonde. “Far more than most realize. Many seem to think that Light equates to Good, and this is far, far from the truth.”

He lifted one hand, and summoned a pale white light to it. “Light can illuminate...”

It flashed brightly, leaving spots on Strider's vision.

“Or it can blind. It can enlighten, or it can sear. What you see with it might be valuable, or it might drive you to madness and despair. Light is not good or evil; it is, quite simply, knowledge. Some would call it _fortune_ , but I take a different path. There is, after all, no such thing as _luck_ \- odds, certainly, but in the end we are playing chess, not dice. A Thief might steal another's ability to see the whole board, might use their light to _blind_ , thereby changing their 'fortune'. A Seer might simply see the whole board, to know all there is to know - for ill or for good. And a Knight? A Knight will have to use their light to burn, to defend. In addition - ”

“Dave, I'm real happy for you and I'mma let you finish, but I asked how you were movin so fast, not for some lecture on metaphysics.”

There was that thin smile again.

“Striders. Always so cagey about themselves, and always so direct with others. Simple - I can move _as light_ , or _with_ light. As for the illusions and burning pillars here, I can control light. The curious thing about light, you see, is that it sets the speed limit for the universe. It is the absolute fastest you can move within the fabric of space-time, and, thus, as you grow closer to it, time slows for you. In a way, the faster you move along the space axis, the slower you move through time. Simple relativity. ”

So that physics shit Bro had drilled into his head really did have a use. That was... actually kind of interesting. It fit in with what Dave Harley had said about space and time being the same thing.

“Okay. So how do you do that without a focusing item?”

“To put it like a Strider, 'shenanigans'.”

“Gotcha.”  
“Then, another question, if I may: what have you gained, David?”

Not what he was seeking, certainly. But perhaps...

 _Through a house of mirrors..._

“Knowledge of self.”

This time, Lalonde's smile was not thin at all.

“Then it was not a worthless effort.”

“Nah. Sometimes we gotta look into the glass.”

Lalonde frowned almost imperceptibly at that phrase, but said nothing.

“Anyway, catch ya on the flip side, Lalonde. It's been real. Be quicker 'bout the stairs next time and maybe I'll listen.”

“It's unlikely I will; it has indeed been real; I'll do my best; and no, you won't. Though... speaking of warnings.”

They both stood. Lalonde handed the iShades and timetables to Strider. However, Lalonde kept one of the vinyls in his hands, turning it over.

This one was orange.

He knew he shouldn't have made it, he knew. But a part of him had burned with curiosity. Part of him had _needed_ to know. So he'd taken a handful of orange feathers and used them to alchemize the disk.

It held so many answers. Maybe more to that question – _knowledge of self_ – than he'd get anywhere else.

“Take it from one who walks in light; the razor's edge between knowing and madness. There are some things one is not meant to know; some histories best left in dust. If you are indeed anything like my dear Jade Strider, and if this record represents the timeline I think it does...”

He sighed, and handed it over.

“Power has a price. And knowledge, too, is power.”

“You get that one from a fortune cookie? Nah, I'm good. Take care of yourself, aiight?”

He put the red record on and [set it to play](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjR-yJpzQz4).


End file.
